Malaysia Airlines 777 missing en route to beijing

[Mange]

I just heard on the news that the Vietnamese navy apparently has sighted debris in the water, but that it's too dark to be certain.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Anecdotal I'm sure. I also fly out of KL and have never seen such a thing.

Missing Malaysian jet may have disintegrated in mid-air, source claims
KUALA LUMPUR — Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner with 239 people on board suspect it may have disintegrated in mid-flight, a senior source said yesterday (March 9), as Vietnam reported a possible sighting of wreckage from the plane.
By -
1 hour 38 min ago

KUALA LUMPUR — Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner with 239 people on board suspect it may have disintegrated in mid-flight, a senior source said yesterday (March 9), as Vietnam reported a possible sighting of wreckage from the plane.

International police agency Interpol confirmed that two passengers on the flight had used stolen Austrian and Italian passports, raising suspicions of foul play.

An Interpol spokeswoman said a check of all documents used to board the plane had revealed more “suspect passports” that were being further investigated. She was unable to say how many, or from which country or countries.

Malaysia’s state news agency quoted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as saying the passengers using the stolen European passports were of Asian appearance, and criticising border officials who let them through.

“I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces,” he was quoted as saying yesterday.

Nearly 48 hours after the last contact with Flight MH370, mystery surrounded its fate. Malaysia’s air force chief said the Beijing-bound airliner may have turned back from its scheduled route before it vanished from radar screens.

“The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet,” a source involved in the investigations in Malaysia told Reuters.

If the plane had plunged intact from close to its cruising altitude, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the investigation publicly.

Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical causes.

Boeing, the maker of the 777-200ER, declined to comment and referred to its earlier statement which said it was monitoring the situation.

Dozens of military and civilian vessels have been criss-crossing waters beneath the aircraft’s flight path, but have found no confirmed trace of the lost plane, although oil slicks have been reported in the sea south of Vietnam and east of Malaysia.

Late yesterday, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said on its website that a Vietnamese navy plane had spotted an object in the sea suspected of being part of the plane, but that it was too dark to be certain. Search planes were set to return to investigate the suspected debris at daybreak. REUTERS

I like the quote “I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces” by your Home Minister quite very much.

[slebetman]

I like the quote “I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces” by your Home Minister quite very much.

Actually having family members who are Swedish citizens and having Italian friends who're ethnically Japanese I know that such things are not only not impossible they're not even rare.

Given that people must travel abroad in order to attain a different nationality it shouldn't be surprising that people with non-matching ethnicity/nationality statistically tend to travel a lot. Thus you should find a higher number of people with non-matching ethnicity/nationality at airport check-ins than anywhere else.

Besides, the moment anybody starts suspecting ethnicity/nationality mismatch they're going to get complaints of racial profiling from non-white Europeans. Not that Malaysians have anything against racial profiling (indeed, we tend to scrutinize Indonesians who come here) but I guess they would rather not mess with complaining Europeans.

[InsaneTD]

Passports normally list ethnicity don't they? I don't have one so I can't check.

[bilateralrope]

Passports normally list ethnicity don't they? I don't have one so I can't check.

If the photo on the passport matched the person who used it to board the plane, then ethnicity would also match. If the photo didn't match the person, then referring to their ethnicity is not needed.

Either way, I don't see how bringing their ethnicity into it would have helped.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I like the quote “I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces” by your Home Minister quite very much.

Actually having family members who are Swedish citizens and having Italian friends who're ethnically Japanese I know that such things are not only not impossible they're not even rare.

Given that people must travel abroad in order to attain a different nationality it shouldn't be surprising that people with non-matching ethnicity/nationality statistically tend to travel a lot. Thus you should find a higher number of people with non-matching ethnicity/nationality at airport check-ins than anywhere else.

Besides, the moment anybody starts suspecting ethnicity/nationality mismatch they're going to get complaints of racial profiling from non-white Europeans. Not that Malaysians have anything against racial profiling (indeed, we tend to scrutinize Indonesians who come here) but I guess they would rather not mess with complaining Europeans.

It's the names. How often do you find some Chinese or Malay with a foreign name with not even an element of Chinese or Malay word in it?

But yes, there's always been an element of Westerner worship amongst Asians here and there.

[Sky Captain]

If the plane was tracked by radar when it crashed as was mentioned in some news then I wonder why does it take so long to find any pieces. Even if it disintegrated in flight there still should be some floating wreckege scattered in crash area.

[Sea Skimmer]

Vietnam never actually said they saw it crash on radar, the media it seems made this up and attributed it to a Vietnamese admiral who said something different. It seems they did say they detected it on radar at one point but it was over 150 miles offshore at the time. It seems Malaysia is unsure if its own radar, at an unknown location, saw the plane turn off its planned course. If they were not recording the radar data that would come down to grilling the operators memories, not a great source of information. Vietnam may be doing the same. Not all older radars record all the time.

It would be impossible to see the plane at lower altitudes at a 150 mile distance, and if it did anything but a straight nose dive into the water it could have easily flown tens of miles in any direction while loosing altitude, or potentially much further. At a typical ~480 knot cruising speed every minute of flight is eight more nautical miles of uncertainty in every direction. That turns into a big circle in ten minutes, the entire Gulf of Thailand in under thirty. Even gliding with no engine power a plane that fast and high might go over fifty miles. Why no radio contact while something went wrong? Who knows, but traveling a significant distance cant be ruled out. Even if it crashed on course its not a tiny area to look at because of the issue of angle of fall going down.

Meanwhile if hit the water in one piece, not much debris would have been released, and the Gulf of Thailand like any enclosed body of water is already full of man made oil slicks from various causes like ships pumping dirty bilge water overboard they shouldn't. Meanwhile because the water is very shallow sonar conditions for picking up the beacons on the black boxes are bad. They'll be found if they are in the water, its better then if they fell to the bottom of the deep ocean, but it could easily take several more days to find them. Most of the ships searching so far are civilian or smaller government patrol boats that don't have sonar in the first place.

So yeah if they don't find it in a week, I'd be a bit surprised but little to nothing in two days with limited search assets the first day isn't so surprising. We'll see soon I imagine if that door like object spotted from the air turns out to be 1) a door and 2) a door from a 777.

[mr friendly guy]

Passports normally list ethnicity don't they? I don't have one so I can't check.

My Australian passport does not. It just lists my nationality and that frankly should be all it needs, especially since a lot of nations are multi ethnic.

[LaCroix]

I like the quote “I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces” by your Home Minister quite very much.

*Looks around in his office*
1...2...3...4...5....

Right now, I have 7 "Austrian Asian" people sitting around me, and I know that at least half of them are born here, while most the rest immigrated in their kindergarden age. (There is one more indian guy, but he's just here for training and will go back to the Pune branch in a few months.)

[LaCroix]

Passports normally list ethnicity don't they? I don't have one so I can't check.

My Australian passport does not. It just lists my nationality and that frankly should be all it needs, especially since a lot of nations are multi ethnic.

Neither does mine. There is a photo in there, what more "ethnicity" do you need?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I like the quote “I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces” by your Home Minister quite very much.

*Looks around in his office*
1...2...3...4...5....

Right now, I have 7 "Austrian Asian" people sitting around me, and I know that at least half of them are born here, while most the rest immigrated in their kindergarden age. (There is one more indian guy, but he's just here for training and will go back to the Pune branch in a few months.)

Do they have Austrian names? I find it rather hard to believe that Asians, given how hard on most Asians are about their native culture, will ditch their native names for foreign names altogether. At the bare minimum, their middle names are Asian.

[LaCroix]

Do they have Austrian names? I find it rather hard to believe that Asians, given how hard on most Asians are about their native culture, will ditch their native names for foreign names altogether. At the bare minimum, their middle names are Asian.

Two of them have - one has taken her husband's name at marriage, and one of the guys is the son of a Austrian-Philipino couple. (Which is quite common - you would be amazed how many Philipino woman have married Austrians. We imported a lot of nurses from there at one time.)

[mr friendly guy]

Some Filipino colleagues I know had names which if I didn't see their face I would have assumed the person was white.

I mean with surnames like Francisco, Rivera, Fernandez its not obvious they are Asian.

[salm]

There is also the posibility of adoption. Our former foreign minister, Philipp Rösler, was adopted during the Vietnam war and given a German name by the adopting parents.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Some Filipino colleagues I know had names which if I didn't see their face I would have assumed the person was white.

I mean with surnames like Francisco, Rivera, Fernandez its not obvious they are Asian.

Those would be Eurasians, which Malaysia has a fair share but most of those look Indian/Chinese/Malay, like the CEO of Air Asia is one.

In any case, if the passengers holding onto the fake passports are Chinese or Thai or whatever, the odds of getting some foreign sounding name are incredibly low.

Of course, if they are from Central Asia with a mix of Caucasian looks, and what not, then all bets are off.

[Broomstick]

Passports normally list ethnicity don't they? I don't have one so I can't check.

Mine doesn't – but it was issued over 30 years ago so maybe it changed but for a nation like mine listing ethnicity is kind of pointless given that we have people who came here from all over, most of born here are mutts, and it's easy to change your legal name in this country.

Right now, I have 7 "Austrian Asian" people sitting around me, and I know that at least half of them are born here, while most the rest immigrated in their kindergarden age. (There is one more indian guy, but he's just here for training and will go back to the Pune branch in a few months.)

Do they have Austrian names? I find it rather hard to believe that Asians, given how hard on most Asians are about their native culture, will ditch their native names for foreign names altogether. At the bare minimum, their middle names are Asian.

Can't speak for Austrians, but it's a toss up here. Some Asians keep their names, some become “Bob Smith”. Then there is the surnames like “Lee”, which can be either Chinese or the descendant of a semi-famous extended family of colonial-era rebels in Virginia with European ancestry (and maybe some Native American) or a descendant of their slaves of predominantly African ancestry.

Even in nations that are still predominantly one ethnicity you usually have some full citizens with ancestry from other places and that's been true for centuries.

[Broomstick]

Even gliding with no engine power a plane that fast and high might go over fifty miles.

Air Transat Flight 236 had a complete power failure over the Atlantic at 33,000 feet (10,000 m) and glided 65 nautical miles (120 km) to an island runway so yes, 50 miles is entirely possible. Actually, Flight 236 could have glided farther, when they reached their landing they actually had to circle a bit to lose excess altitude before landing. The pilots had calculated they could have glided another 15 or 20 minutes. Modern airliners actually glide very well.

Why no radio contact while something went wrong?

IF they had a complete power failure the emergency electrical power would be very minimal. This could sharply reduce radio range. In both the Gimli Glider incident and the Air Transat one which involved complete power loss the pilots found that their radios had trouble reaching anyone though, eventually, both of those planes did re-establish radio contact. It is possible that in this recent case the pilots were using the radio but it didn't have the range to be heard by anyone.

[AniThyng]

I like the quote “I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces” by your Home Minister quite very much.

I was rather more amused by the one where he tried to imply EU passports might be less advanced than ours and that's why immigration failed to notice they were stolen or forged or whatever. ( fwiw I don't think Malaysian passports arein any way subpar, it's justthat EU passports are surely of the same standard )

In any case, no one's found anything... Sea skimmer, how effective would the ASW equipment of the P-3 or the helicopters be? Is a MAD useful at all?

[Edi]

One of the more unlikely possibilities is the plane being struck by a meteorite. Would not need to be a big chunk of stone, given the speeds they are going. It's also the kind of event that is impossible to prepare for and which would cause instant catastrophic failure and possible disintegration/explosion in midair without warning. I wouldn't start placing bets on something like that until all other options have been exhausted first, though.

[InsaneTD]

It seems about as likely as any other theory that the local Australian news is spouting, massive structural failure, terrorist high jacking (oddly, the idea of a bomb hasn't come up), and I can't remember what the last one was. They also said Aussie search aircraft are now in the area, they have plenty of experience finding small things in large patches of water.

[Sea Skimmer]

A meteorite causing breakup, that's about one of the few things we can rule out, because inflight breakout it would make for a huge obvious debris field of floating junk from inside the cabin. It actually would need to be a large meteorite to do that because the damage path needs to be decently wide. A meteorite that passed through the cockpit, leading to a loss of control and slow crash at some random point, sure, that would be even more unlikely but would actually fit the (not much) evidence.

Bombs aren't being mentioned much for the same reason as any other inflight breakup, they tend to leave debris if they bring the plane down instantly. If it hit the water intact, then everything that floats could still be inside the hull.

[General Zod]

Given how common traveling with phony and/or stolen documents apparently is, it wouldn't surprise me if the missing passports were a complete coincidence.

[Zaune]

I just caught a news report on BBC radio saying that the travel agent who booked the tickets used in conjunction with the stolen passports had been asked to find "the cheapest route to Europe", and they were getting a connecting flight from Beijing to Amsterdam. That tends to support Zod's assertion.

[Borgholio]

Looks like an Iranian bought the tickets.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/10/world/asi ... ?hpt=hp_t1

Sorry, can't post quote...on mobile ATM.